


under observation

by recycledstars



Category: Farscape
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Established Relationship, F/M, No Angst, Porn with Feelings, Sort of exhibitionism, Tickling, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, explicit but somehow still quite coy, lots of feelings, sex is a thing that happens, sex is pretty much the only thing that happens, your mileage may vary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 20:00:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6871348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recycledstars/pseuds/recycledstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talyn is watching, Aeryn doesn't care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	under observation

**Author's Note:**

> If I ever write a title that isn't a highly questionable pun you can assume I've been replaced by a pod person. (I'm so sorry.)
> 
> So this is an implication of living on a living ship that Farscape never really developed. And [I've always wondered](https://recycledstars.tumblr.com/post/57296442513) about Talyn's short-lived but controversial fanvidding career. Plays loose with the canon (specifically, Aeryn's experiences in _Green Eyed Monster_ feel a little brief for what I describe herein, but this take propped up a sex joke I found amusing) as well as the timeline, but what else are we here for? 
> 
> I think back in the day we used to call this kind of thing a 'smut biscuit'. There's a culture lesson and some banter and his 'n' hers orgasms. That's about it.

John was a little distracted. And not in the usual way, not because her hands were tugging him against her by the belt loops, not because her breath was hot against his ear and she was groaning, panting, as their weight fell against the wall.

She moved to kiss him again, but he stopped her, pulled back to rest his forehead against hers. It earned an eyebrow, but just one, and she indulged him, allowed him the question: 

“Aeryn exactly how much could you see, when you were hooked in to Talyn?”

She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“Well. Uh. The vid chip - ”

“I told you, it wasn’t real.”

“Yeah. But even with creative editing, stock footage had to come from somewhere.”

“Oh.” Her mouth took on a playful slant and her fingers followed up. There was the pop of a button, purr of a zip, then her hand venturing into his pants. “I was alone.”

She was cupping, squeezing, definitely double-talking when she very throatily asked, “Do you want to know what I was thinking about?”

But he had something else on his mind. He removed her hand from his person. She looked appalled. 

And he felt truly crazy for the first time since she’d started to drown out Harvey because what kind of _idiot_ took Aeryn Sun’s incredibly nimble fingers off – 

Whatever. He had a niggling concern. 

It’d started right when she’d unzipped her shirt and dropped it to the floor beside a busted tangle of cabling a corridor over, but it hadn’t hit him ‘til just now. 

She’d been wearing the kind of pout that tended to take up most of his attention and tapping her foot with her arms folded to perfectly frame her cleavage. Oh yeah. And there was the half-nudity. Lot to process. 

_Can that wait?_ A veritable purr. _Because I don’t think I can_.

 _Yeah, true that_ , he’d sort of thought. Sort of thought maybe she could have waited just a little, kept her clothes on until they’d locked the door. Not that he was complaining _per se_. And semi-public was fine, was a little exciting, but it was hardly an unfrequented thoroughfare.

She hadn’t had right then and there in mind though, just a bit of a chase, a bit of a rush to find a horizontal surface they called their own, interrupted by her kissing him and him kissing her and – 

It hadn’t really crystallized until they’d made it through the door and shucked their shoes and she’d started shimmying out of the leather, catching him staring at her in her underwear, thumb wearing at his lip.

She’d mistaken the reason for his thoughtful scrutiny, because ordinarily he did like to look, so she made a kind of show of it, sliding off her underwear, taking down her hair. 

Then she was single-minded, tugging off his shirt, working them into the wall, turning her back up against it and pulling him to her, but he had been distracted, was still, and that left Aeryn looking at him, trying to parse what was an admittedly non-standard response to her sexual advance. 

“That’s ... something we can revisit.” He thumbed over her cheek, thinking she was beautiful, thinking he really wanted to know if he was the only one thinking that at the present moment. “Right now, I wanna know just how much privacy there really is around here.”

She slumped back, folded her arms. “Talyn monitors what happens on board as a matter of necessity, for security. And he relays filtered sensor feedback through the neural interface.” 

“Filtered?”

“There’d be so much information it would be meaningless if it were everything. Most surveillance is routine, uninteresting.” 

“And again I ask, how much could you see?” 

Her lips got that sinful curve to them. “Enough to know that you lied to me.” Her fingers danced down his arm, a light, glancing touch that combined with the expression on her face had his body singing with anticipation. She was about to deliver a blow to be sure, but these days he never knew what that meant. And was often pleasantly surprised. “You don’t really alternate.”

“Yeah. Well,” he muttered. “I’m right-handed.” 

“I know that too.” She took said right hand and guided it to a particularly delicate region of her anatomy, encircling his wrist to hold him in place, and rocking against his palm. Damp curls and wet heat. He was getting less distracted.

“You’re dexterous enough,” she bit out at his demonstration of the same, thrust of his fingers, slip of the thumb. Her teeth moved to catch her lip.

“So, Talyn sees all, knows all, but doesn’t necessarily stream it all on broadcast?”

She tilted her head back to catch the wall, eyes falling closed. “Mm, something like that.”

“Just the good stuff?”

“Yes,” she breathed and it was hard to tell if that was a real answer or just a response to his other hand closing around her hip, pushing her up against a hard surface.

“Don’t you think this qualifies?”

“This is fairly routine,” she pointed out. “Fairly uninteresting.” 

It would’ve been slightly insulting, if she hadn’t let out a needy little whine when he pulled free to reposition so there was less strain on his wrist, and a very loud, very satisfied moan when he resumed the task at hand.

“Honey, if you think Crais isn’t interested in that sound you just made then, then you really don’t understand men.”

“He’s a Peacekeeper John.” She rolled her eyes and her hips, a little non-verbal cue for him to change it up so he did, searching for a better response with the pad of his thumb. It cut her off before she could finish the thought. 

“Or was. It would be.” A hiss, a groan, the knock of her head against the wall and her eyes pressed closed again. “Inappropriate.”

She was trying for purchase, gripping behind her, but found nothing to hold onto. So she reached for him, fingers curling tight around the leather of his waistband. 

“To watch?” 

“Yes." A low hum, a smile, like she knew it'd send his imagination into overdrive, which it did. "At least, not without permission.”

“Against those rules you liked so much?”

“Rank affords a great deal of latitude. But it would still be … impolite.”

“And you really think that’d be taken into consideration?”

She opened her eyes, displeased at his preoccupation, and answered flatly, “We live in very close quarters. I was bred and raised and trained under scrutiny. And right now it doesn’t much bother me who’s watching.”

She was tightening around his fingers, and the rise and fall of her chest was rapid, cheeks flush with arousal and there was definitely no embarrassment at the action and reaction of her body. Actually there was a kind of pride in it, in her skills and her enjoyment, and her lack of inhibition was usually all kinds of sexy. But he did have inhibitions, at least a few of them, and he was still a little put off, a little uncomfortable at the idea of putting on a show.

Her nails dug sharp at his hip when his hand slowed. 

“Oh _frell_ ,” she huffed, glowering, but sensing she wasn’t getting an orgasm out of him until she gave a better answer. “Even on the largest command carriers, space and resources are limited. A lot of the time, sex can hardly be a secret. But discretion is valued. It would be undisciplined, disrespectful to our values, not to mention almost pitifully childish – ”

“Okay. I get it. Everyone’s in the same boat.”

Her brow knitted, quizzical, her ‘puzzling out an idiom’ look which was girlish and beautiful and half the reason he used so many of them. 

“Same situation,” he explained.

“Yes.” She nodded, and canted her hips against his hand to encourage him. 

Then, at the limit of her patience, she moved her hand from his hip to his erection, got a good stroke in. He jerked in response, not expecting it, crowding her against the wall. She looked up at him, gave him a sly, sexy grin.

“It just … really wouldn’t be acceptable,” was how she finished the explanation, clearly at a loss for how to communicate the cultural difference more clearly. And she was a little shaky when he slid his fingers out, up, coaxing another groan when he found the right spot. 

“Not standard operating procedure?” 

Her head shook, her hair shook and _she_ shook and still, somehow, incredibly, he had _another_ thought, even though she was moving her hand, he was moving his, matching rhythm and synchronized, shallow breathing. Combined it felt good enough to set higher level functions to override, and yet, it struck him: “Then why’d you look over the tapes?”

“What?” 

She was pushing him back then and they started a struggle with his pants before making it to the bed, which was a mistake, dragging gravity into the fight with leather and friction. They fell against the mattress, side by side, and he was grinning at her something stupid he could tell, didn’t care, couldn’t resist reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear.

Somehow, despite all the twists, turns and missteps along the way, this, with Aeryn ... it was fun. He'd expected, hoped for and dreamed of a lot of things, but not that, not quite in the same way. Sure, sex always had been, when they liked each other, before they fell in love. But _that_ had thrown an arduous learning curve. One that had finally plateaued, and after all the uphill he couldn’t quite believe how easy it was.

“What?” she repeated, softer though, probably more about the way he’d started to run his thumb along her hairline.

“Well leaving aside the fact that this kid is storing his home movies in long-term memory – ” He managed to kick off the pants less gracefully than he worked his hand into her hair, tugging a little until her mouth pressed to his. The kiss was teasing, a dance of tongues, until it wasn’t, until it was wet and deep and … they needed to be fucking yesterday, he wanted her with an intensity that felt like it might burst. 

But she seemed sympathetic to urgency, was rolling him onto his back, breathing over his mouth, her hair falling around them.

“Why were you lookin’ through the back catalogue far enough to know I don’t alternate?” he managed, even though she was testing with her hips, slick pressure, and the fact that it was more for her pleasure than his, that she was teasing, didn’t do much to curb the effect. 

“Oh.” Aeryn sat up with wanton little grin. “Talyn showed me. He was panicked, but he still had a general sense of what I was interested in.”

“You were interested in me?” 

“Certain parts of you.” She shifted again to take him in her hand. “Happily, they seem to be equally interested in me.”

Then she sank down and they were more than interested, they were aching, and she was loud and trembling already, control slipping and thrusts greedy. 

She was a pretty picture, a worthy subject, and condoned or not, if you’d given him the instant replay he’d have watched it ‘til the cassette wore out. But who cared, really, if he got to be her co-star in the live action?

Aeryn had never struck him as a performer, had actually been the universe’s worst actress the few times he’d tried to get her to improvise a ruse to get them out of a jam alive, but she arched her back and palmed a breast and that was definitely theatrics, definitely for show, and the fact that he knew it didn’t matter one whit.

He gripped at her thighs. “Camera loves you baby.” 

Enough of that translated for her to smirk. “And what about you?”

“Yeah, I love you too.” 

She tangled the other hand in her hair, watched him watching her, slowing for a moment. 

He surprised her, tugged at the wrist at her chest to pull her off balance, down against him, and her eyes widened comically. It was a tactical move, made it easier to get a hand between them, eliciting a very genuine gasp and an only half-serious glare and she righted herself enough to nip at his chin. 

“So it doesn’t bother you who’s watching?” she asked, nose-to-nose. 

“Nah.” He sat up into her, hand wedged, unable to move but she was grinding herself against his fingers in a way that sounded like it was working out just fine. “They might learn something.”

She started to laugh but came with a violence, a shout and a clench and a collapse into him, hair everywhere. And she kept trying to move, a boneless and stilted counterpoint to his half-thrusts, impeded by her weight. 

It was inelegant, but enough. Her arms clutched, held him against her chest, muffling the yell, and he caught the ends of her hair in one fist, came to a stop, a stillness, moved his other hand to her hip so she did the same. 

He had a lot of things he wanted to say and no ability to form words, just a rush of emotion and sleepiness and stupor. 

Then she sat back, on her heels, on his knees and blew her hair out of her eyes with a cute little puff, and John couldn’t help but laugh. In wonder and fondness and amusement, and she didn’t understand the reaction, head half-cocked and smile very suspicious but it was contagious: he skimmed along her side, wiggling his fingers and she made a sound that he might have called a giggle, were it made by anyone else. 

And _that_ was irresistible, the discovery that even Peacekeepers were ticklish, fingers curling over her ribs and down her stomach, her sides while she writhed and laughed and smacked at his shoulder. When she tried to scoot out of reach he caught her, rolled with her until they were both sprawled and smiling and still. 

Aeryn was looking at him, half-asleep and content, her fingers curling around his between them. And it felt normal, and human, and alien, and new, and comfortable, and surreal, and strange. But mostly, it felt like the two of them, alone against the backdrop of the universe, with no one watching.


End file.
